


Mischief Maketh Man

by officialzeloswilder



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awesome James "Rhodey" Rhodes, BAMF Loki, BAMF Rhodey, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Capture, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Kidnapping, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Has Issues, Loki-centric, Outer Space, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Shapeshifter Loki, Shapeshifting, The Void, Tony Angst, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Feels, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:11:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5314385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/officialzeloswilder/pseuds/officialzeloswilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fed up with his piling losses against the Avengers, Loki kidnaps Tony Stark and goes undercover as the new Iron Man to unveil the team's weaknesses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is MCU canon compliant until after The Avengers. From there, most everything is fair game, though there are common threads throughout the films and the story.

Façade’s weren’t so complicated, and going undercover was even less complicated when accompanied with a mask.

Every moment of life in a social context required the flex-and-bend abilities of superficial charm in order to coax whatever it was one wanted out of the situation. Strategically placed smiles, hands pressed into the right nerves, eye-contact and name usage—all were carefully manufactured to maintain whatever it was that an individual substantiated as the ultimate truth. So, no, going undercover really wasn't so hard when one understood properly that truthful-to-desires ends came from the root of carefully placed lies.

In this case, there was one lie.

The lie in this context—that he was Tony Stark.

The truthful end—a future ruled by Loki.

Humans were both similar and different to one another in innumerable ways. Like insects, they all fell under a vast category like anthropoda. Some had tongues that bit out with words like venom, some coaxed with therapeutic words sprinkled over with healing properties. Grouped together, humans were surprisingly vast. However, they were always still insects, still useless, still sticking into the grating underneath his boot soles. But, he hadn’t the history to know which human was which, hadn’t figured out how to quite assimilate to the very annoying scenario of underestimating one as a beetle, only to be bitten by a spider.

Being beaten once was humbling. Being beaten twice was simply embarrassing. Now he neared the double digits, and madness seeped into his methods. Repetition of the same over the same over the same tactics. Same. Same same same. He once might have been arrogant enough to claim to know the complete ins and outs of Thor’s martial strategies.

Now he had to admit that he didn’t; because Loki had fought alongside Thor, the prince of old, and this Thor, this avenging figure, fought differently alongside his humans. Until Loki knew how the humans worked together, he would never be able to cognitively articulate just what it was that made the captain decide to stand and fight, or to act as a distraction. He couldn't know what guided the green monster on his path of destruction. Never mind his initial shortcomings, now the fact stood that the team was beginning to fluctuate and grow with new members. It was after Loki had been slapped down by a massive jolly green fist, yet again dented deep into the Earth, that he was forced to admit that he could not say the same as them. He had not grown at all.

“No better time to start than the present.” A human saying he had learnt on his new path of research.

The façade of choice had been a little harder to decide upon. He needed a figure that would be easy to infiltrate, who wasn’t always on guard for an attack. He needed somebody far removed from the others, so that they might not realize a wolf in sheep’s clothing lurked around them. Somebody not so close to Thor. But then, he also needed somebody useful. If he only wanted proximity, it would be far simpler to hijack a janitorial staff member, or perhaps even the Pepper woman that followed Stark around.

He needed somebody involved in the fighting, somebody trusted while simultaneously extenuated. After the requirements were settled, Stark fit into the hole like a perfect cylinder in a child’s game. The man of iron was barely a hero already—nobody would notice if a villain wore his skin.

Loki awaited his opening. His gaze locked on Stark from within the folds of the void while he studied his new subject. The bravado of the mechanic seemed so hilarious now when paired with the lonely pathways of a man who worked himself to exhaustion, only to stop when his emotional lines burned out and he needed to make a fool of himself in sight of the world. Stark walked a very careful line between being the most boring man alive and a most amusing court jester. Clever, Loki commended him. Nobody thought to question the gait of a fool—even when his stride weighed heavy with a fully utilized suit of weaponry.

Finding an opening without people was only one part of the process. Then came narrowing down the window to a point without the assistant, J.A.R.V.I.S.. The house was out of the question. Loki knew better to go anywhere near Stark while he was surrounded by his collection of suits. Months passed without happenstance and Loki almost considered abandoning the plan for more typical mischief. Patience was never one of his cardinal traits. Then the opening came so suddenly that it felt like a blessing from the Norns.

Stark in his workshop, leaned back with his legs kicked up with a map spread out in front of him. Loki in the void, half-asleep and considering a quick bout of world hopping as he only half-watched the scene.

“I haven’t gone to a conference in a while, huh,” said Stark.

J.A.R.V.I.S. replied, “No, sir.”

Loki yawned.

“How long has it been, do ya think? It’s got to have been at least a year, right, Jar?”

“Four years, ten months, and eleven days, sir. But you were still very close.”

“Give or take a few years,” Stark concurred. He pushed his feet off the table, spun back away from his desk, and hopped onto his feet. “Clear the calendar and ready a flight plan, Jarvis. I think it’s about time I make an appearance for the young inventors of the world. I hear Stockholm is beautiful this time of the year.”

“It is. Should I bring up pictures from the Stockholm visit of—”

“Nope!” A rude interruption, but the conversation was pulling Loki out of his disinterest. He leaned forward from within the void on his ornate arm-chair and clasped his hands together while he waited and watched. Stark was bounding around his work-space now with unfamiliar gusto--an energy normally reserved for his social performances. “I want to experience it all anew. That’s a thing people do, right? Revisit places. Pretend they’re new. Give the place some new blood—have you finished the flight plan?”

“Of course, sir.”

“It’ll be nice.” Tony hoisted his jacket over his shoulders, brushed the leather collar with the back of his hand, and puffed out his chest like a penguin. “To be away from technology for a while. A good old fashioned cleanse. No offense, buddy.”

“I’ll be here licking my wounds, sir, but I’ll try to be in good form by the time you return.”

Loki sat straight in full alert now, the void fold of stone and caverns pressing deep into his contrasting peripheral as he watched Stark laugh and order his assistant through the process of trip planning. (“Tell Pepper I’ll be back later. It’s not a big deal. Cap’s got it all under control. It’ll build character for them to have to do some of this work for once in their lazy lives.”) No technology. No Potts. No Rhodes. No J.A.R.V.I.S…

Yes Loki.

He leaned forward and laughed, already in sync with his façade even millennia away from his universe.

 

Stark landed in Stockholm in his suit near midnight, drank in the bar until three, staggered up to his room and collapsed into bed at four where Loki had been waiting for him since two.

Within seconds of slapping into silk sheets, Stark’s snores bellowed through the room. He practically bubbled from the whiskey. Loki waved a hand in front of his nose to try to ease the stench of alcoholism. After a few moments spent in vain, he gave up his air freshening quest and slipped up to his feet from the corner of the room where his veil had been cast. And, for a naïve second, Loki thought to himself, “That was easy,” even though he really should have known better by now.

Mid-snore slammed to a screeching halt, Stark grabbed the alarm clock from the bedside and threw it in Loki’s direction. A sloppy throw by a sloppy drunk. Loki sidestepped the weapon, quickened his pace, and grabbed Stark’s wrist tight.

“Don’t struggle or I break the bone,” he hissed, teeth bared.

Stubborn as always, Stark wretched underneath him. Honest as always, Loki clenched and the bone snapped. The other hand made quick work to reach up and force Stark’s jaw shut to muffle the inevitable scream.

Loki shoved his knee down hard into Stark’s kidney. “I have a reputation to uphold. What kind of evil god would I be if I can’t even hold up the promise of a broken wrist, hmm?” He twisted the arm and Stark’s eyes shut tighter, muffled scream more pronounced and desperate through clasped lips. “That is my codename amongst your avenging comrades, is it not?” He constricted around the jaw and Stark’s eyes relaxed, fluttered, the sign of a barely conscious man. “Evil, crazy, god of mischief Loki.”

Inkblot black eyes peered through slits up at him, twitching and pulsating beneath him as he struggled to focus through the pain. Loki couldn’t help the smile.

“You always wore your suit as a mask, Stark.” He let go of the jaw to grab both sides of Stark's head. “So you of all people will understand me when I say I need a new fascia to get what I want these days.”

“Don’t do this,” whispered Stark. Begged Stark.

Loki laughed. He slammed Stark’s head into the back of the headboard. Blood swiped over the edges of the wooden frame, beautifully embedded with wooden patterns, all hand-carved.

On the other side of the door, a knock sounded. A drunken giggle from a drunken girl.

“Meester Stark? Are you okee?”

And Loki called back in Tony Stark’s voice, “When am I not?”

She giggled. “Caan Iee come een?”

“Afraid not! The best things in life always have an exclusive window, darling. Come back tomorrow and maybe you’ll have the winning ticket to earn your prize.”

She giggled away from the door, her steps a drunken stumble underneath her. Loki glanced down at Stark in consideration, his blood still seeping from his fingertips.

“It’s almost easier than acting like a real person, Stark.” He slid off from the mechanic, let magic swipe his hands clean of the blood. “Like a play, practically. You’ve never done a real thing in your life, have you?” From the beard, to the product, to the alcohol, to the playboy lines, to the iron suit, Tony Stark was a character slipped into by the most self-deprecating of souls.

Loki smirked and waved his hand through the air. The void sliced open and he hoisted Stark up and over his shoulder, his breathing shallow and still bubbling from the drink and now the blood loss. He stepped through the void with his new mask in tow and only set him down when he was inside the caverns of the lost world.

A cavern made of rokego stone and perfidulo energy, something foreign to even Loki before his days of traveling between universe fault lines, was where he set Tony Stark’s body. The substances were malleable to magic in a way they weren’t to bare hands, especially not to a human. Loki pulled Stark’s hands into his own and ran his fingers along the outside of the roughened epidermis. In the back of his mind, he detailed every crevice in Stark’s palms and wrists as he bound him with the rokego cuffs.

He would later strip Stark down and conduct the autopsy of his persona because Loki was no fool. Enough people had seen Stark naked so that the iron man in the barest of flesh could be a conceivable way for Loki’s cover to be blown. He needed every birthmark, every scar, every hair in order. He was many things, prided himself on being everything, but he was always prepared. He would not be thrown out of his plan because of the disarray of a sex tape—another thing Loki had discovered and watched in his time of researching Stark, and just one more reason for Loki to save the world another day of this fool’s idle, time-wasting habits.

After conducting the search and inventory, Loki redressed Stark in a flourish of his magic and sat back. The bounds were insufficient so he made a few more, mimicked the chains that he wore back to Asgard after the attempt on Earth with the chitauri. When Stark awoke, Loki was chuckling at the irony and still considering the possibility of a muzzle—though he considered the broken jaw to be enough of a deterrent that Stark would keep quiet.

Useful to know, when Stark was angry his eyes did not narrow. They practically bulged instead, like it took every ounce of power for him to remain cool, to keep the façade. His jaw flexed to tighten, but Stark immediately winced and settled on staring—because glaring was different from this full-focused glower—the pain causing his eyes to water.

“Oooh. You’re not mad at me, are you?” Loki sat down on the rock in front of Stark, spread his knee out and left his leg kicked up on the rock right by Stark’s face. “Or is it simply that you thought my recent silence meant I was giving way to compliance to your superhero game? Certainly you know better than to think so little of me.”

“I still don’t think highly of you,” Stark growled through a barely open jaw.

“Because I don’t match up with your heroics. I understand.” Loki let his hands spread wide before him. At the first sign of real movement, Stark made a move to scoot away only to discover his immobility. Loki smiled wider. “But I’ve been doing some research and I’ve found heroism is highly subjective. I mean, I’d always been predisposed to believe such a thing but, I’ve come to find out, it also applies to your noble avengers.”

Stark said nothing, just kept that unblinking stare of ink-blot eyes locked on Loki.

“You barely agree on anything. Whether you fight over the proper amount of justifiable authority, your Hydra or your SHIELD—Though,” he raised his eyebrows, “I’ve discovered the differences between those organizations were minute to begin with. You barely agree on the morals of one another. Barely agree on how much fighting is too much fighting—who you speak to and who you kill. It simply depends on the whimsies of your moods, which straw is too heavy to endure your responsibility.”

Loki softened his gaze and tone, a caress of carefully tended contagion. “You’ve been cracking for so long, Stark. You’ve been weak even before New York.”

“Shut up,” Stark bit out.

“I’ve been watching you, because I’m not careless, and you barely sleep. You’re a shell even inside your iron shell.” Loki stretched lazily until he was standing up and sliding boot along the stone in a leisurely pace. He shrugged. “Well, not iron, obviously. But the name _is_ catchy. I digress. If anything, maybe this break will be good for you. Perhaps you can use your imprisonment as a time of introspection—as you did the last time, correct?”

Stark struggled up, made for a lunge, and ended up sliding on the rokego and landing directly on his face. Loki snorted. “You humans are stubborn. It’s almost admirable.” He kicked Stark over onto his back so he could stare up at him with barely contained fury. “If it weren’t so pitiful, that is,” Loki taunted with a pouty lip and puffed cheeks like he might mock a child. Stark, Norns bless his courage, spit up at Loki in turn.

Loki slammed his foot down on that wrist again and kept the weight heavy until Stark’s scream faded out into sobs. Irate sobs, which Loki would give him credit for, but still snivels, still weak.

“If it eases you, I will offer you this…” Loki stepped away. Stark rolled back into the wall and coiled up as far from Loki as he could. “I chose you out of them all.”

Stark’s voice was sandpaper rubbed raw on steel when he snarled through his stiff jaw, “It doesn’t ‘ease’ me, you lunatic.”

 “Oh. Well.” He shrugged. “One can’t fault me for not trying then.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Loki let his magic wash over him, pulled from inside and sent like a shockwave along the edges of his cells until even he wasn’t sure he was Loki anymore. The height left him (Odinson? Laufeyson? Stark… Howardson?) and green traded itself for black irises. Then, when the process was done, an echo of his new voice whispered from the floor, “What the hell did you do?”

And Loki answered back, almost giggling at the hair above his lip tickling his new not-so thin lips, “Can’t you tell? I’m the new and improved Tony Stark.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was just a few inches of height lost, but the hotel room still felt brand new upon reentry from the void. He paced the floor, feeling out his new form like he would any other, and stretched long as he eased down upon the bed. Loki kicked out his feet, noting the oddity of not quite reaching the edge of the grand bed, and shrugged. Stark had been chosen for accessibility, not physical prowess.

After a few moments of rolling around on the bed, it was clear Loki wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. New forms were always excitable, always wanting to get out and press into the scenery. The sun already peaked out from behind the Stockholm horizon, so getting up wouldn’t be so strange. Stark wasn’t an early riser, but sometimes he never went to sleep. The behavior wouldn’t be too unusual and jetlag was a common influence on the frail human form. Loki hopped out of bed and padded out of the room, a bottle of water in tow and a robe around his shoulders.

Even at the turn of dawn, the recognition of who he was resonated with each staff member he passed. Not entirely unfamiliar to a prince, certainly Loki was plenty used to having help acknowledge and stand in awe of him (though that was a long time ago from now, when his parenthood had been more definitive, when he hadn’t been _blue dabadeedabadah_ — He shook the sudden song out of his brain with a scowl), it was definitely not something he had seen from humans for a very long time. His anonymity had been crucial to walking the surface without incident, but now Loki walked freely and the only interruption came from staff offerings of help or guidance through the resort grounds.

He refused help from them all, waving them off as he continued on his adventure through the building. It was going good until a brown haired scientist, unshaven and generally deplorable looking, came into sight around the corner. There, seated in a cushioned chair by the window with a cup of coffee and laptop ready, was Bruce Banner.

Loki froze. First instinct was to turn tail and run, though he knew better than to feed into it. The beast was Stark’s comrade—one of the few of similar interests as well. Acting strangely around the monster would be the quickest way to inform the humans that their Stark was not so starkly simple as he appeared. He plastered on his smile, the one Loki knew looked false because that was simply how Stark acted, and strode over to complete his very first test. He stomached a shudder at the thought that the only alternative to passing with flying colors would be another beating into the ground by giant, barbaric fists.

“Funny seeing you here,” Loki chimed as he plopped down across from a surprised Banner. He reached out to grab the coffee from him only to have Banner grab it first and rear back away from him. Loki’s gut wretched at the possibility that maybe he agitated him already, even as Stark, and that he’d get a beating regardless.

Instead, Banner sighed and sipped the coffee before setting it out of arm’s reach. “Is it?” His voice was dry.

“You don’t typically get out much. Too much Netflix, not enough chill.”

(Months of the research had been spent watching a lot of appalling television and excavating American websites, though Loki would never freely admit to it.)

“I was thinking more about the fact you saw me earlier,” Banner eyed Loki suspiciously. _Oh, come on, he was better than this!_

“Did you?” Loki half-laughed.

“I don’t expect you to remember. You seemed more interested in your friend, Jack.” When Loki didn’t reply right away—too busy thinking to himself how careless he was to have missed a integral friend like this Jack fellow—Banner sighed again. “Daniels. Jack Daniels. You drink too much, especially at an academic conference.”

Loki smiled to cover his relief. “If I’m still coherent, does it really make a difference? Y’know,” he added, knowing how Banner would switch off the lecturing if he got a dose of the same medicine, “it wouldn’t kill you to loosen up.”

As expected, Banner fumbled. “Y-yeah well… It wouldn’t kill you to tighten--… Oh, never mind.” He practically buried his nose into his coffee and turned to glare out the window. “Why are you even conscious right now?”

“Sleep is for the weak.” A saying Loki had heard many times while surveying Stark and one that was practically tattooed into his brain at that point. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to deprive you of my company.”

“You’re still drunk,” Banner decided. He shoved his mug of coffee over the table towards Loki. A simple motion, but Loki still winced away quickly from the scientist’s hand. When he closed his eyes, he could already see the green fist.

“Hey,” Banner’s voice suddenly soft. “You’re acting weird. You okay?”

He laughed. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m peachy. Peachy peachy peachy.” Loki grabbed the mug and chugged the coffee. Still scalding. He could feel Banner gasp across the table.

“Why wouldn’t you be? Gee, I don’t know.” Banner stood up. “Maybe it has to do with Pepper dumping you. Would that be it?”

Well, that was certainly valuable information. Loki hadn’t even known the two had ever courted one another. He faltered on what would be an appropriate reaction to Banner’s assumption—humans actually cared about those they were once intimate with—and decided on that quiet, warning look Stark wore when he was being threatened.

“Is that really relevant right now?”

Loki contained himself from an open celebration when Banner cringed again. Looked like Stark could say just about anything to the beast and get away with it. Good to know.

“I guess not. I’m just checking up on you. You’re sure you’re okay?” Banner put a hand on the table, as close as he seemed to be able to get to a comforting hand on the shoulder. The man was certainly emotionally stunted.

Loki stood up and huffed. “I’m _fantastic_.”

“Fantastic enough to give a speech on the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox?”

Oh. Well, then.

“Of course. Have you forgotten who I am? I’m starting to think you’re distracting me from asking what’s wrong with _you_ —”

“Right right!” Banner laughed and raised his hands in surrender. “How dare I doubt your genius! Maybe I should go find the nearest MD and get my head checked.”

Loki snorted. “Maybe you should.”

“Look, I’ve got something I—”

“Right right. Do your thing.” Loki was already turning around and walking away, coffee in hand.

“Your talk is at noon!” Banner called after him. Then he added, in a mumble, “In case you forgot that too.”

“Thank you, honey!” Loki hollered back to him. He rounded the corner and stopped short to think his plan over. The urge for caffeine compelled him to drink where he stood.         

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen? Rosen… Like the Rosen bridge? Humans were excruciatingly complicated about their vernacular. The way they designated their physics, their sciences, and excluded the possibility that might from s _eiðr_ or other magics, made for a difficult time in even understanding just what it was they were talking about. Like a child speaking about anatomy with completely made up terms. (“This isn’t a knee, it’s a boneyscrungle!” Useless to a healer who needed to fix one.)

But… Why would Stark be giving a talk about the Einstein-Rosen bridge? Had Stark already known about traversing the void? Loki had only been watching him for a few months and he hadn’t been particularly interested in looking over the specifications of his work, only to glance over them when he needed to cure a bout of insomnia. What a short sight Loki had! Of course Stark would be asked to expand on some convoluted concept at some time or another. How foolish to assume anything else.

Loki hurried down the hallway and to the elevator where he rode it up until he reached Stark’s penthouse suite. He had some research to do and only six hours to do it.

Upon entering the room, he searched through the suitcases for any sign of the assistant’s connection. Stark might have claimed to come to Stockholm unplugged, but there were other villains aside from Loki out there. Besides, Stark rarely kept word on any instances that included delayed gratification, which removing oneself from technology would have definitely been an occurrence of. The red and gold suitcase on the ground buzzed with familiar energy, something Loki had imprinted on after just one fight with Earth’s mightiest heroes. Loki pressed his thumb into the case’s handle and it beeped in response before folding open before him.

An earpiece was the first thing Loki saw, so he put that on first and let the tiny glass frame settle in front of one eye. That was an odd setup. He blinked a few times to adjust.

“Had an enjoyable night, sir?” J.A.R.V.I.S. hummed in his ear with a voice oddly similar to the noble Asgardian cadences Loki had grown up with.

Loki knew this part was liable to become tricky. Luckily, tricks were his specialty.

The assistant had the most information on Tony, could most likely be the rod in Loki’s spokes that sent his wheel off the tracks. The original plan had been to use no seiðr aside from J.A.R.V.I.S.. Seeing as how the timing was prime, Loki weaved his spell as he spoke before the program had much time to realize its creator had been replaced by an impostor.

“When don’t I?” he replied, trying to ignore the ridiculousness of speaking to a disembodied voice (ignoring the irony of having grown up with a presence such as Heimdall). “Hey J, did I sign up for a talk at the conference?”

“Yes, sir. You volunteered to give an introductory lecture on the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox. Given all your recent research, you told me it would be ‘a piece of cake’.” It was remarkable how much sarcasm had been built into the machine, as though nothing Stark created could function without oozing with such a lexicon.

“Right. Can I get a review?”

“I gather you had a _very_ enjoyable night then, sir.”

“Review!” Loki clapped his hands impatiently.

“Of course, sir. Should I begin at the incorrect conception of Heisenberg’s—”

“Give me all of it. I want to have everything.”

“Very well.”

* * *

 The review took four hours and the lecture took one. The original plan of no sorcery was gone, and Loki had a loop of Jarvis’s (now a name to him and no longer an anagram) lesson going through his brain to help facilitate the lesson to the crowd. He fluttered it with sprinkles of what could only be described as Starkisms: disgustingly irrelevant pop culture references, grandiose, self-congratulating comments, and flirtations with the crowd. By the end of it all, Loki wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep for a year. He finally was beginning to understand Stark’s cyclic social tendencies as he headed off the lecture stage and made way for his room, even if that meant ignoring every rudimentary human who approached him for pictures or comments. Another research topic for another day would be the relevance of a selfie and just why everybody seemed to want one with somebody as reprehensible as Tony Stark.

When the fifth woman approached, Loki pushed his way past her, expecting the same groupies as before. “Not now, I’m busy.”

“Tony Stark, what the hell came out of your mouth just now?”

Loki froze, turned around, and found himself face to face with Jane Foster.

The woman Thor changed for, the one he almost died for, the one whose blood once pumped with aether and now was painfully ordinary all over again. He felt the flash of almost-death all over again. That almost mortal wound that churned his gut into putty until he wanted nothing more than to coil up and heave.

He could kill her in a second. In front of all to see. Maybe he wouldn’t get his niceties on the avengers like he’d hoped to, but it would destroy Thor from the inside out…

He needed those details. Loki would have to kill her somewhere more private.

Loki smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was you! Y’know, Jane, I think maybe we should get some coffee. Let’s talk science!”

Jane beamed back, unawares. “Thanks for suggesting it first. I have quite a few corrections to make on your lecture, if you even want to call it that.”

“Then we should take this to the penthouse,” Loki decided. “Deal?”

“Deal.”


	3. Chapter 3

Nobody ever expected to be killed by a friend or acquaintance or lover, though logistics assured that these were the highest risks to any person’s safety. Friends killed friends, parents killed children, children killed parents (Loki could attest to that one), brothers hurt brothers (this one as well), allies killed allies (maybe it would be save more time to simply list the relationships Loki could _not_ attest to), and spouses killed spouses (there was one he hadn’t done!). After all, Loki had been betrayed by Odin. Abel by Caine. The most unlikely part of Stark killing Jane simply was that he wasn’t closer to her, not that he might not actually be Stark in the first place.

With enough time passed, maybe Thor would have betrayed Jane Foster. He was almost to that point, after all. His proximal existence plagued her already short lifespan with more danger than a human could handle. It was only a matter of time before Thor simply being Thor would result in her death.

Loki guided Jane to the elevator and pressed a code for the penthouse, using the coos of his magic to urge the elevator to the room without security bypasses since he hadn’t bothered to learn the specifics of the resort before kidnapping Stark. His fingers lingered over the buttons and he savored the slow curl of power as it coaxed the elevator up to his room.

“You feeling alright, Tony?”

These humans were more observant than Loki had initially accredited of them. He turned and flashed a Stark trademarked grin. “You’re sweet. Should Thor be worried?”

Jane rolled her eyes. “You just seem… off. Bruce said you were at the bar all night? Taking that into consideration, I guess your talk wasn’t too awful. You at least seemed to think you knew what you were talking about, and sometimes that’s enough to convince at least the younger part of the crowd.” She acted like she wasn’t barely out of childhood herself.

Her dismissive tone sparked his temper. Loki raised his eyebrows and tried his damnedest to keep his words casual. “And where exactly did I go wrong?”

These science types were sidesplittingly full of themselves. Jane puffed up, much like Loki had witnessed Stark doing while conducting his surveillance, and smiled in a self-aggrandizing way. “I don’t expect you to know, since you’re always playing around with your toys.”

Loki balked. “ _Toys_?” A gut punch with one of Stark’s power beams would be enough for Jane to redact that statement.

She continued regardless, “But this is my field, after all.”

The human ego suffocated him. He considered killing her then, but the elevator dinged and opened at the penthouse. Loki stepped aside graciously to allow Jane first entry. “Do tell.” She didn’t move just yet, too distracted by her own babbling. He straightened up and wondered why he bothered.

“I just can’t believe you, an avenger, would give a talk on the bridge and leave out Asgard. That’s why anybody showed up to hear that lecture, and I don’t think of you as being so self-centered that you’re in denial about it. But, instead of giving the people what they want, you gave this weirdly elementary talk that everybody in that room knew from their undergraduate studies. It felt like reading the Wikipedia article on quantum physics, Tony.”

“What exactly are you implying?”

“You could have told drinking stories and that probably would have been enough for a standing ovation.” Jane shook her head, finally walked into the penthouse, and plopped onto the couch. “But you didn’t mention anything like that. We know the science, Tony, but we now have the—well, not humanity, because Thor isn’t very human… But the personability! Not only do we know the bridge’s uses now, we know it’s used by _gods._ And they have their own government, kingdom, politics! And you looked at that, interacted with it, and then did a lecture on the particle makeup of stardust. I understand why you wouldn’t bring up the wormhole in NYC—sorry for even bringing it up in passing.” The wormhole? “But I’m worried this is something else. The whole talk was just… Underwhelming, Tony, even if you are hungover. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Well, did you ever stop to ruminate over the fact that there’s more to the bridge than just the charismatic golden prince of Valhalla who storms over it?” Loki snapped. “Maybe going back to the basics is the most integral thing a scientist from _Midgard_ can do, before they’re blinded by his nauseating vastness? The details trump the decoration.”

That silenced her quick enough.

“… Okay there, Loki,” she said slowly, hands raised. He froze until he remembered how very underhanded his name was used by these people, as an insult and synonym to sociopathic shortsightedness. If only they knew how intricate his plans were, then they’d think twice of throwing his name around as anything but a compliment. “Did I miss something?”

Loki shut the door behind him with a burst of seiðr. Jane jumped in unison with the deadbolt as it slapped shut and locked.

“You quip wasn’t as far off as you’d hoped.”

Jane was petite, even through Stark’s sight. Gaining back his height, his form, his indisputable aptitude, put Jane back as Loki remembered her: as a feeble human who clawed at the edges of Thor’s cape as she trailed behind him on his heroic quests. Her expression morphed as he did, from shock to horror to anguish. He expected her first words to be pleading for her life. For someone so self-professed with their intellectuality, it was the most sensible thing she could do.

Instead, she bolted up to her feet and demanded to know, “What did you do to Tony?”

“How sweet. Thor’s altruism must be rubbing off on you.” Loki paced around the room, slow and contrary to the quick darts of Jane’s gaze as she planned and faulted every possible avenue out of the penthouse.

“It had to rub off on somebody,” Jane snapped. She’d changed since the fight with Malekith, more likely to stare down her nose at ‘evil’ now and oppose it openly. Loki stepped forward and she stepped back. He bowed forward with laughter, his hand settling along his leather fronted gut as his armor clinked.

“Oh, this is quite a dance we’ve gotten ourselves paired into, Jane.” He drew her name out, let the vowel fester on the tip of his tongue so the N cracked out like hot grease from a pan. She winced. Just a little, but enough for him to catch. When he stepped forward again, she stumbled back into the couch. “You should rest your feet.”

He thrust his hand forward, a pop of seiðr sending her into the cushions and holding her immobile as he crossed the foyer and settled beside her on the couch. He sunk into the cushions and reveled in her fear.

“What do you want?” Jane demanded. Shaking, but determined. Admirable.

“Must I answer every question? You just finished enlightening me of the reach of your grand intellect. How I must be so very simple to even dare to give such a talk on your remedial concepts of realm traversing.  Tell me, what is it that _you_ think I want?”

“The same thing you always want.” Her eyes narrowed. “To screw with Thor.”

“So candidly put!” hooted Loki. He leaned closer and she cringed away. He’d never be sick of it. “But I can’t argue with it…” He reached a hand up to curl around her hair. Her jaw clenched. “It’s been a long time, Miss Foster.”

“Not long enough.”

“Did you miss me?”

“No.”

“Ooh!” He pulled his hand back, grin wide to gibe her ego. “Not even a little? Maybe you’ve inherited more from Thor than you know.” Loki’s hand slipped around her neck now, tapping along tendrils. “Self-righteous and temperamental. Perhaps ‘humanity’ wasn’t the wrong word you could use to describe us after all.”

“Are you just going to talk me to death?” Jane jerked her head away. “Or are you finally going to do something?”

Knocking someone unconscious, especially somebody with human frailty, wasn’t particularly hard. He constricted his hand around her throat while casting a spell to shield himself from the inevitable spew of saliva that came as Jane struggled under his grip. Her struggle fell way with her cognizance and he sat back to admire his good work, a passed out scientist filled to the brim with leverage and knowledge.

As tempting as killing Jane Foster was, even he wasn’t so careless. She knew things he couldn’t dream of learning in such a short span of time—things that Stark would know and expand upon in his own ways. He couldn’t wipe Stark, not without jeopardizing the integral parts of his soul that Loki was forced to call upon to shapeshift into his form. He couldn't be too much Stark, he couldn't be his brain _and_ his body without chancing a loss of Loki. But Jane? Well, he could pull the information out of her head without issue. And it would taste a lie to say it wouldn’t be satisfying to dig through her mind, this precious pet of Thor’s.

Seiðr fluctuating, he reached into the depths of her memories. Images of research, years of it in fact, where Jane stared down the nosepiece of a microscope or up at the skies where Heimdall no doubt watched this insignificant woman with her dreams of gods. Then the sickening moments of time with Thor, then the battle on Svartalfheim. A scene of Loki, collapsing into the dirt with the gaping hole in his gut, clouded by Jane’s tears. The echo of his words to Thor bouncing off the sides of the cliff-face. “I’m a fool. I’m a fool.”

His seiðr stuttered. Loki pulled away from the memories and off the couch. His chest heaved and his hand reached for that long scar in the crevices of his too-thin abdomen. Time had long passed since the fight with Malekith and the dark elves, and his replacement of Odin almost just as far as even that. He leaned forward, steadied his nerves, and sat back up. That journey, too, had been a façade. No need for sentiment.

Loki called back his magic and dove back into the depths of Jane’s mind for the facts. Forget the worlds, the details of the inconsequential creatures who lurked alongside them. He knew all about the worlds and their populations. He needed the dictionary facts of Midgard through the small eyes of humanity. He needed to know how to describe a home, not as the man who built it and now lived inside, but from the point of view of the insignificant mouse underneath the foundation.

“Mmm.” Loki slurred up from his sitting position to stand and look over Jane’s form. “I suppose I understand the basic appeal.” Though he didn’t understand what Thor saw. He was normally was drawn to more muscular, forceful women like Sif. Women who acted first and thought later. Jane Foster was an intellectual, a scientist. It was still hard to grasp that a woman who thought at all could find anything worthwhile in Thor and his thunderous personage…

He was getting sidetracked. With sought after data in hand, Loki was now face-to-face with a new dilemma. Sticking Stark in the fold of the void was simple enough. Loki was acting as an identical replacement, nobody would miss him. But he couldn’t be both, not Jane and Stark. Killing her raised the alarm. Keeping her raised a separate alarm. Jane needed to be in sight so Thor didn’t feel bad about ignoring her for his missions of majestic valiance. As much as he wanted Jane to remember the nightmarish sight of a shapeshifter Stark, the posterity would jeopardize the real mission at hand.

“We’ve had such a lovely chat. It’s a shame you won’t remember it, Jane Foster.”

Just like before, his seiðr coaxed through her mind and wiped away the images of him and that silly slip of the tongue about Thor from her memory. He wiped away the feelings of panic, fury and… Melancholy? Loki shook off the sensation, unarmed in the efforts to understand a human, let alone one as mad as Thor’s love.

Five minutes later and Loki was feeling insignificantly _Starky_ once again when Jane finally blinked back into unconscious.

“T-…Tony?” her voice was bleary, and relaxingly not-venomous.

“Shhh. You passed out after we got up to the penthouse,” Loki said at her side. He handed over a bottle of water. “I think the thin air finally got to you.”

Jane shut her eyes and groaned. “My head…”

“You hit the floor harder than a rock. I got you on the couch, but you’ll probably feel pretty nasty for a while.” She unscrewed the top of the bottle and chugged it half down. “Look at you, making me feel all responsible.” Loki jabbed her side playfully. Jane just groaned again.

“Yeah, don’t get used to it.” She looked up at him. “But thanks. You’re a good guy, Tony.”

Loki smiled, warm, down at Thor’s foolish woman.

“I try.”


	4. Chapter 4

If his jaw hadn't been broken, Tony Stark would have been screaming. Would have been cursing. Would have been doing anything but laying on the ground in the middle of these caverns—more caves, more terrorists, more people using his name to further horrors against humanity. He thought he was over this hump in his life, so the encore wasn’t exactly what he’d call welcomed.

Tony curled up against the wall of the cave and it hummed in turn like a living, breathing entity. Like Loki, it pulsed with magic and foreignness. Tony winced away from the stone at the comparison—he’d had enough of Loki for one lifetime—and coughed aside as controlled as he could to alleviate the stinging agony along his neck and face. Even with all the concentration in the world on keeping his bones motionless, he still hurt.

Tony rolled away from the wall and into the middle of the cave, ignoring the screaming from his wrist and the tears rolling down his cheeks. He was so sick of magic, and so sick of the villains with inferiority complexes who used it. So sick of spending more of his life aching than not. He remembered when a hand cramp was a bad time. He’d kill for a cramp these days that didn’t have to do with bad guys and world domination and whatever other nonsense they could come up with.

The team wasn’t completely unused to shapeshifting. Thor especially was used to Loki’s tricks. Even if he hadn’t been, if Thor stayed put in Asgard while Loki worked through whatever the point of his scheme was, the latest fights with the Skrull were enough to keep the team on guard of suspicious behavior. They might not guess it was Loki walking around, but they could make the leap to assume that it might not have been Tony. But only if Loki slipped up and only if he didn’t have enough time to use his magic to sweep his mistakes clean. Loki might have been off-kilter, but Tony wasn’t about to call him stupid. There was an unhelpful chance that the little brother Luigi of gods could get a long way down his path of destruction before anybody grew wise.

Tony's self-imposed isolation from the team lately wouldn’t work in his favor. He had been standoffish, he knew that. And nobody could blame a guy for sulking after a breakup! Still, it would give Loki more time to adjust. By the time he got the act down, the sulking period would be over and the team would welcome their new Tony with open arms.

Shit.

For whatever reason, Loki left him alive—though even that wasn’t unprecedented. While parading as Odin, Loki had left him alive as well. In a coma, yes, but still alive to discredit him later on when Thor wandered into the wrong part of Asgard’s Disney Princess Tower and found his sleeping beauty father unattended (odd, considering Odin had been downstairs conducting kingly business at the time).

Tony’s mind flashed with a memory of being thrown out a window by the personification of daddy issues and Tony noted that Loki letting him live had nothing to do with a kind heart or anything even remotely sentimental. If Loki could have killed Tony and still paraded around with his face, he would have done it immediately. Leaving Tony in the folds of the void meant leaving a hole for somebody to find in his scheme. Thor could find him through his guard dog, Heimdall, or through some other means. Maybe he could even use Odin. But there was also the point that, if Loki could be so easily monitored, he wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place. Tony counted his discovery by Norse security firms as small odds. He’d need another plan.

Unable to grit his teeth, Tony settled on holding his breath as he attempted to squirm out of the cuffs. The rock curled against his skin, tightened, and burned into the shattered bones of his wrist. His shattered, right wrist. The one he used to work. To create. If he didn’t get it set soon, he may not ever be able to use it again—His chest clenched up with sobs.  _Not again._

This wasn’t the time for panic attacks and hysteria. But, God, why shouldn’t he be hysteric? He couldn’t beat Loki on a good day by himself even _with_ his suit, so hungover, injured, and suitless weren’t upping his chances into something he could work with. If he got loose of the cuffs, he’d still be trapped in the void against these alive-not alive rocks that felt so much like Afghanistan that he. That he. That he.

Tony unhinged his broken jaw and vomited, just barely missed his shirt with the bile of alcohol and expensive caviar from the resort. He pulled away from the pile, grunted when he hit the humming rocks, and settled on shaking against stone as he tried so hard to ease the hyperventilation into a manageable pant.

What if nobody realized Loki had replaced him until it was too late?

What if Loki knocked them all down, one by one, like pieces in a chess game. Because Loki thought everything was such a damn hoot. Every malicious intent was just a mischievous taunt. He was the cat in the game of cat and mouse, but what the hell kind of game ended up with half of the party dead? Of course the cat thought it was fun, the cat got to go on to round two with a belly full of stupid mouse.

If Loki got frustrated, if his temper snapped, he could blow his cover.

But then somebody would die in the wake of his tantrum.

Tony found himself hoping Loki could lie better than the Skrull, could stay under the radar without hurting anybody at all. Let him assume his life, fine, so long as Pepper was safe. Rhodey was safe. Cap and Bruce and everybody else. They could get a new Tony, and he could rot in the void reliving torture in Afghanistan with a chest full of shrapnel. He could live with that. But please, oh please, oh please oh please, don’t let them get hurt.

He thought of Pepper dying at what she thought was Tony’s hand.

He leaned forward to wretch again, but nothing came out. Just the exhausted aches of a man on the losing side.


	5. Chapter 5

“Sir, you seem to be having trouble adjusting to the altitude. Are you feeling alright?”

The iron man suit sputtered. Loki toppled over himself in the air, hands outreached to regain balance on reflex. He slammed his arms back to his side once he remembered the stance he’d seen Stark take while in pursuit during their battles. The suit evened out once more.

Flying was such a presumptuous ability. Damn Stark for making it one of his many trademarks.

“Don’t patronize me,” Loki snarled. “You’ve already run your diagnostic. You know that I am fan--!” Too much momentum. He barrel rolled through the air to the right and corrected the path yet again. “I’m fantastic!”

“I searched for toxicity levels and found you impressively sober. Good job, sir.”

“Good job, sir,” Loki mocked.

“And might I add that your accent mimicry has improved tenfold.”

Once Jane had been properly prodded and wiped, she became an instrumental tool in helping Loki survive the conference. With each encounter, Loki adjusted to what others expected of Stark (and he noted a lot of pitying glances when he had to answer, “No, Pepper didn’t come. We’re not together anymore,” to their prying questions. Humans put such pathetic weight upon their conquests). He used Jane as a bounce pad in case he lost footing in a scientific vernacular-filled conversation. And, after three days of near constant contact with her, he was beginning to understand Thor’s… Not his attraction per se, but perhaps Loki could fathom developing a begrudging fondness for the spit fire of a woman. Not enough to mark her as indispensable, of course, but enough to talk himself out of outright upsetting her for his fun. She helped him more when she was agreeable.

Loki fell into the rhythm of the conference just as it reached its end. After the closing ceremony, he noted the others dispersing. Banner had been long gone for at least a day and Jane had left that morning. Evidently, Stark never stuck around so long, and Loki was soon surrounded by prying humans who noted the abnormalities and wanted to suck the life force from him like buzzards. More and more, he thought back on Stark’s constant avoidance of true contact and thought, “Yes, that does seem the best way to deal with these cretins.”

So Loki grabbed the suitcase, a pun he was sure Stark felt pride over based entirely on the way Jarvis recited it upon opening.

“Suitcase is ready for deployment, sir.”

That’s when Loki deployed. Flying couldn’t be that hard. Stark had made the first suit in a cave, had adjusted and improved each one after with startling speeds. He shoved them off from time to time to his companions when the time came and they always managed it just fine. Even Thor did it, for Norns sake!

Loki had always hated flying. He thought back on being tossed over Thor’s shoulder after deserting a fight and swinging through the atmosphere, all with the undeniable urge to be sick. He once blamed it solely on Thor’s carelessness. His flying wasn’t really flying, after all, just momentum from Mjolnir. But, two seconds in the suit clarified a great thing Loki never needed answering. He did not enjoy flying at all in any context, protective suit and enchanted hammer be damned.

“How long until the destination is reached, Jarvis,” Loki said, already growing used to phrasing every question like a demand and receiving a compliment from every mandate. A compliment heavily layered with saccharine sarcasm, but still politely delivered all the same.

“Approximately six and a half hours.”

“How long have we been in the air.”

“Twenty minutes.”

Loki choked back a gag. “Great,” he drawled out, already tired.

“I thought so as well, sir.”

Stark’s flight plan hadn’t been set for his own mansion, but for Avenger’s tower. Loki was practically vibrating with excitement. How exhilarating to finally put the plan into action. Sure, he’d met and fooled Banner and Jane, but the two were child’s play compared to the rest of the team. Everything before he stepped into the tower was simple the warmup. Now the game really began.

He stepped down onto the landing gracefully and followed the path along into the tower as Jarvis dismembered the suit for safe storage. Loki made a quick glance over the window to see which of his team members resided inside.

A familiar face. Barton.

An unfamiliar expression. A smile.

“Hey, Tony’s back!” Barton called over his shoulder indiscriminately. Then, “He can fix the toaster, Nat!”

“I’m fixing it right now, we don’t need Tony,” Romanoff said from the kitchen. The sound of a ding and then the wafting smell of burnt bread, all wound up with a curse.

Loki smiled despite himself. They had no idea what was coming. He stopped his laugh from bubbling out. “What’s wrong with the toaster?” he asked, keeping his tone light.

“Somebody,” Loki didn’t need a doctorate in linguistics like Stark to translate Somebody into meaning Barton, “put an arrow in the toaster.”

“I didn’t ‘put an arrow in the toaster’,” Barton contested.

“Then why was there an arrow in the toaster?”

Barton flipped through the television channels, one foot kicked sickeningly up on the table as he slumped against the couch. “I was framed.”

“Why was there an arrow in the toaster?” Loki had to ask.

“That’s not important,” Barton assured firmly just as a familiar voice rolled through the room like the complacent aftershock of thunder and said, “Our friend found that waiting for Steve to press the down slot on the toaster took far too long. He shot an arrow to hit it first.”

“And missed. And put an arrow in the toaster,” Romanoff accused.

Barton jerked forward on the couch, his energy pulsating like an eager pup. Meanwhile, Loki was trying really hard to focus on that eagerness and this light conversation and pick out the faults of the people in the room, but it was getting increasingly hard to think straight with that familiar chuckle vibrating his eardrums as Thor padded into the room with easy confidence. Loki’s vision blurred on the edges with rage and he thought, this was close enough, a power beam through his stupid blond face would be enough, damn the plan, damn the world, damn Thor Odinson.

“The arrow wasn’t supposed to go into the toaster. I never miss,” Barton was still talking. “If Cap hadn’t moved the toaster, it would have worked!”

“You shot an arrow at him.” Romanoff said.

“With no warning,” added Thor. “Of course he moved out of the way. It’s simple strategy in battle.”

“Except this wasn’t battle,” Loki found himself saying, and even he was surprised by how calm and lilting casual his tone was. “It was breakfast. Barton’s right, he never misses. Cap should have just trusted his teammate.”

“… Your sarcasm is getting harder to decode,” Romanoff spoke first.

“Ah, it is.” Thor smiled, grandly, of course. “But arrows in appliances aside, we are all greatly pleased that you've returned! It’s been very quiet these past few days. Jane told me you two crossed paths at your Home Stock conference?” He walked over and slapped a hand on Loki’s—Tony’s—shoulder. Loki sidestepped away as quickly as he could.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, quick enough to cover up his sharp anger. Thor blinked and stepped back in confusion. Quick, recover!

“This is a new suit. From Stockholm.” Loki stood up straight, hating how he had to look up even more at Thor while in this form. “Not Home Stock.” Okay, that had relaxed Thor quite a bit. Now, for even more Starkism to alleviate the staring eyes and suspicions.

“Everybody knows that a suit needs at least three touch-free wears before it reaches its premium wear.”

“That’s not a thing,” Barton scoffed.

“Definitely not,” agreed Romanoff.

“It’s a thing,” Loki assured. “I don’t expect you two to know it, but it’s a thing. Rich kid to rich kid, right Thor?”

He shuddered at saying the name so casually, broke into a ridiculous shimmy to cover up the gag. “Right, buddy?” That was better.

Thor stared him down.

Loki would have a second of a head start if he attacked Thor now. He wouldn’t get his weaknesses cataloged, but… If his cover would be blown anyway, he might as well jump first—

Thor broke into a boisterous laugh and stepped away graciously. “Of course,” he relented. “I joyously can recount many days in my years where we also underwent the period of avoiding touch to maintain the grand stature of our cloaks. Your class is very wise, Stark.” He winked charismatically.

What Loki wouldn’t have given to stab that eye out of its socket. Like father, like son.

“When is Bruce coming back?” Romanoff inquired. “He was at the conference with you, wasn’t he?”

Loki couldn’t resist. “Your pining heart can’t stand another minute away from him?”

“Cute. Did you write that line about Pepper in your diary?” Loki almost winced before he remembered, he had never met Pepper, let alone dated her. He wasn’t actually Stark, after all. “No, my pining heart is fine. There’s a few things we could use his help on.”

“You missed a few things while you were on vacation, man.” Barton hopped up, walked over, and almost touched Loki’s shoulder, but quickly thought better of it. He made a grand gesture with his arms and motioned away from the window where Loki had yet to fully step away from.

“It was a conference,” Loki corrected.

“Yeah whatever sure. Anyway, back to real things.” Barton guided him along the path out of the grand living room. Loki noted Romanoff and Thor walking behind them—all the better to team up against him. Just as they were about to finalize their maneuvers and corner him, Barton opened a door to an elevator.

He could take them in an enclosed space, Loki decided. Barton was small enough that Loki could grab him, use him as a battering ram, and beat Romanoff with his body. Then that left Thor… Keep Barton alive then, use him as leverage and teleport out. Loki stepped into the elevator and stood closest to Barton. He flexed his hand, ready to the first move, and Barton started moving in turn. Barton raised his hand right as the door closed all of them into the elevator and then he started his great attack and…

Pressed the button for the basement.

“There’s been a lot of weird stuff going on, Tony,” Romanoff debriefed. “Steve thinks it’s gamma radiation, which was why we were hoping for an appearance by Bruce, but you’re not so bad at this stuff yourself. You’ll have to do.”

“I am unfamiliar with it myself as well,” Thor added. “So I do not suppose it is Asgardian.”

Loki stopped himself from snorting. Thor wouldn’t know magic if it paraded around as his father and ruled his kingdom for a year right in front of his face.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to reveal the grand room Loki had only seen through magic sight. The avengers conference room. A large, long, Jotun-blue room made up of many chairs, and almost all of them empty, save for two that were occupied by Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers. The two soldiers looked over from the large screen opposite of them in the room.

Loki’s eyes went to the screen just as Rogers began to greet him. The scene played out with a burst of seiðr so obvious that he almost doubled over with laughter. Instead, he settled on a smug smile.

“Hey, Tony, how was the—”

“So, is anybody going to tell me who pissed off the Asgardians?”


	6. Chapter 6

“This is not Asgardian,” Thor assured, indignant and typically stubborn. Loki was reminded of the red-faced little boy who used to stomp about in assurance that every thought that wandered through his hollow head was noble and true. He needed that last piece of cake. Loki was bothering him, father, do something with this annoying little brother. The frost giants needed to be slain, killed, one by one by one…

“Well…” Loki shrugged and stepped over to the screen. “It’s definitely not any technology I’ve seen. Quid pro quo, I think magic is pretty safe to bet on. But don’t take my word on it. Take my documented genius.”

“No offense, Tony, but I think Thor is more of our resident magic expert than you are,” Rogers said carefully. He glanced at Wilson, one of the members that Loki was less familiar with, but he was filling a very important position of reminding Loki just why he was there. He couldn’t predict that one. Still, Loki couldn’t stomach his amusement.

“When did he become our expert on magic?” he inquired with a settled smirk.

“Since he fell out of the sky with a magical hammer and a brother with an inferiority complex and genocidal tendencies?” Barton gawked at Loki, glanced at Romanoff, then at Rogers, then back to Loki. “You having memory problems there, Stark?”

Thor’s expression was less accommodating after having been called out on his misinformation. “What brings you to this conclusion?” He was trying his hardest not to use that king’s voice, but anybody used to being on the other side of Thor’s orders would have issue stopping an immediate bowing reflex at hearing the tone.

“Let’s work backwards.” Because Thor couldn’t think constructively and progressively. He never had been able to, and Loki was all about saving time. “What makes you think that it isn’t magic?”

Thor almost rolled his eyes. He strode over to the screen by Loki’s side and Loki instinctively stepped away. Thor ignored the movement, and ran his hand along the motion of the magic. “This field doesn’t fit any magic form that I’m familiar with. It’s not seeping, it simply attaches.”

Loki stared him down. Thor had never paid attention in school, had never paid attention to anything. Did he even watch Loki fight? Did his eyes even work? Did his brain?

An idea occurred to him.

“Jarvis, pull up our last fight with Loki.”

“What?” Thor glowered. “Why?”

“I want to show you what magic looks like, because you clearly don’t know.”

Loki stepped back over to the screen as his marvelous form overtook the visual monitor. Thor stepped back on instinct, suddenly tense at the sight of his wolf of a brother. He reached out with seiðr, pulled the image into a 3D interface, and upped the opacity. “Watch the attack,” he ordered the group.

“I don’t see how this is—oh.”

Barton cut himself off, like the magic that appeared from thin air from Loki’s hand. The burst of it transported from within Loki’s body and then out, but never seeped. When hologram Loki made a move to attack, the magic transported as well until it made contact with, in this example, Captain America’s shield. The magic did not seep, it attached. Then it crumbled.

He grinned over at Thor. Thor shot back with a glare so severe, Loki expected a storm to hit any second. Still, he couldn’t help his bouncing sing-song as he said, “Unless Loki doesn’t fight with magic, I think you’re wrong, big guy.”

“When did you realize this?” Romanoff demanded.

“Does it matter? It’s all technicality.” All instinct, more like it. “I hadn’t gotten any new technology from watching how he casts. I just know that that,” Loki pulled the hologram back into the screen and brought up the original scene—a man walking down the street being hit with a sudden gust of seiðr. “Looks an awful lot like Asgard magic.”

Thor practically fumed by the end of the sentence, though he was doing an impressive job of hiding it in front of his teammates. “I see,” was all he said, though Loki could tell he wanted to end it with, ‘how much you’ve overstepped.’

“We’ve been interviewing the victims of the magi—attacks,” Wilson corrected himself swiftly. “Blood samples are ready to be analyzed, we just needed your clearance, Tony.”

“Then you’ve got it,” Loki piped. “I’ll look at them now. But you’re less likely to find something like Extremis than you are to find nothing at all. Magic doesn’t leave much of an aftertaste.” One of the clear pros of using it over Midgardian implants or technology.

“If you’ll excuse me.” He turned and headed out of the room to “run the tests”. Loki smiled over at Thor, smug, and continued out the door. And then Loki’s stomach flipped, because here came Thor trotting after him. (He thought in passing how amusing the premise of being tailed by Thor was, when Loki had mountains of memories consisting of shadowing him instead.)

He walked into the elevator, pressed the ‘close door’ button a few times before Thor shoved his massive arm in between the doors and pushed his way inside the elevator. He thumbed the ‘close’ button, and it obeyed aptly. Loki sneered and turned up to Thor, his neck crinkling from the angle.

“Can I help you?”

“You are right, that it is magic,” Thor said. “But you need not involve the team in this pursuit. I will handle it.”

“Oh? By lying to the team?” Loki scoffed. “Good plan. All you’ve done so far with it though is demote yourself from Asgard expert to Asgard tourist.”

Thor turned his attention to the door, eyes narrow and stance magisterial. Loki wanted to puke. “Do not taunt me,” said Thor. “Only trust that I have a plan.”

“If you want my help, you have to tell me the plan. I don’t work for free.”

“No?” Thor smiled, a bitter, twisted thing. Loki found he didn’t like it much. “Is that not the purpose of our philanthropy? To work for the best ends without the motivation of a monetary profit?”

“Heroism and pride are the same as heroism and profit, Montezuma.” Loki leaned against the wall of the elevator (further from Thor). “I can’t help that you’re in denial about it.”

“Are you well, Tony?”

The words slammed into him suddenly, though he’d heard variations of the same question since he’d taken over Stark. Though his walk was a perfect mimic, his seiðr always in sync with the emotional chemistry with Stark back in the void, his words and intonation mirrored and practiced to fit with the conception of the mechanic of the avengers, he still was being pried open and examined. He’d gone through every avenue to ensure his mask would fit without issue, even assimilated Jane to make up for not being able to assimilate Stark himself.

“I keep hearing that,” grumbled Loki, “I’m starting to think you all are just looking for an excuse to kick me out.”

“Don’t say such things.” Then Thor said, in a voice so mild that Loki was shocked his name was in the sentence at all, “It reminds me terribly of Loki’s speeches.”

“What?”

Thor raised his eyebrows lightly. “I know you are not fond of my brother.”

“He’s not your brother.” Don’t blow the cover. “He’s one of our biggest enemies. He attacked the city! Multiple times, in fact!”

“I do not excuse Loki’s behavior. He is…” A far off look in his eyes. _Oh, please._ “Gone from me. I will not fight for him while he fights against us. However,” Thor shifted when the door opened to Stark’s lab, motioned for Loki to walk out first. “Sometimes you remind me of him. Loneliness drove him to madness and madness drove him away. I do not want you to isolate yourself into insanity, Stark. You are better than that.”

Loki’s mouth felt dry. He walked out of the elevator with a comment of, “That’s quite a comparison,” barely tossed over his shoulder. Thor still followed him inside the lab. The elevator shut behind him like the door of a cage. A hyena trapped with a lion.

“Not one that many would appreciate. I understand.”

“I’m better than that, huh? Does that mean he wasn’t?” He kept his tone light as he pumped seiðr through Jarvis’s interface and pretended to fiddle around with one of the holographic charts. Thor padded over to a table and leaned against it, the sign of a man with the intent of hanging around. Marvelous.

“He didn’t think so, or else he would not have fallen so hard and far.”

Loki turned his head to the side to sneer, covered up his distaste with a sniff, and then looked back at the screen only after sparing to glance at Thor’s hilarious melancholy. “Literally or figuratively?” he asked.

“He fell figuratively long before he fell literally. Loki could have done many great things with his mind, with his words, but instead he settled on hurting others because he had been blinded too long by rage and envy.” Thor’s eyes were on the screen, but his voice was filled with the confidence of a man who pondered over their subject a lot.

“… My brother aside,” he finally relented once it was clear Loki had nothing to add (or, perhaps, simply nothing he really wanted answered), “I did mean what I said earlier. I intend on handling this issue myself. I wish you would have let me speak before discrediting me in front of our friends.”

“You mean, you wish I had let you continue to tell a bald-faced lie to the team? Because you have a super secret Asgard agenda, as per freaking usual?” Loki hopped up on the counter behind him, severely impressed he could manage it in Stark’s tiny body, and threw his arms in the air. The hologram reacted in turn like a simulated flip of the table. “Excuse me for not encouraging insubordination, but they had a right to know if you weren’t telling the truth—be it by incompetency or dishonesty. Though, now that I know it’s the latter, I have to say that I’m very disappointed.”

Thor scoffed, uncrossed his arms, and stood tall across the shop table from Loki. “What must I do to prove my loyalty, now that I know my place as your ally cannot be verified by my word alone?”

“Gee, I dunno. Don’t lie?” The irony was making Loki’s cheeks burn with the need to grin.

“This magic belongs to two sorceresses,” Thor confided finally. “They usually work with Loki. He has been out of sight for much too long, and I would like to address them myself to see what has become of him.”

Color him impressed. Not only did Thor really know it was magic, but he knew that it was Amora and Lorelei by the video alone. Though it had been obvious, it was still more than Loki had given the oaf basic credit for.

“See what has become of him,” Loki echoed.

Thor smirked. He shrugged like it was the most casual thing in the world, to speak of crossing paths of his mass murdering little brother. “I do not like the quiet. I don’t trust it from him.”

If only he knew.

“What do you plan on doing when you find him, Rapunzel? Go to family counseling?” Loki grinned. “Open your arms and forgive him of all the people he’s killed, all the times he’s tried to hurt you, and everything that’s happened in between? Then what?”

“I would not bring him here, if that is what you fear.”

“No, but you’d lead him here, if he was feeling particularly crazy that day. Am I right?” Loki lifted a knee up and rested an elbow on the tip of it. “You don’t want to rehabilitate him, you want to put him in a cage. And you want to do it after you lead him away from us, because you’re a self-sacrificing behemoth of an idiot.”

“You feel very strongly about this.” His eyebrow crooked. “Why is that?”

“He threw me out a window.” And into a void as well, Loki added giddily in his head. “And I’ve been on the opposite end of his tricks a few more times than I’d like to count. He’s dangerous.”

“He is not your fight.”

“Once again,” Loki threw his hand up, pointing in accusatory Stark fashion. “He threw me out of a window. Once you do that, it’s pretty hard not to establish an unfriendly relationship.

“Look. He’s for all of us to pursue, not just you. We can go after the sorceresses together, but you going after Loki alone will just put you in a position to get hurt or brainwashed or, I don’t know, maybe he’d tie you up some place in a black hole and leave you for dead while he wore your face. Not like he didn’t do that with allfather of the year already. Who’s to say he wouldn’t do it again?”

“I don’t think he would do that,” Thor decided. Well, not entirely incorrect, since he had picked Stark as his mask instead.

“No? And why not?”

“You are picky today.” Thor’s smile carried into his words. It faded as he thought back to Loki. “He’s already done it. It would be… Unimpressive to do the same illusion twice in a row. He is very focused on appearances.”

“It must be an Asgard thing,” Loki shot back.

“Asgard is different.” Thor nodded diplomatically and stepped closer to the table. “That is why you must let me handle this situation with the sorceresses on my own. Mayhaps I do not find a connection to Loki, but then it will have just been a situation I can handle more swiftly than the team anyway.”

“Not really disproving my Asgardian ego thing right now, just FYI.”

“I have fought them before. It will be quicker without debriefing the rest of the team. Let me handle it.”

“How long have you been sitting here lying to the others about it instead of going off and handling it?”

Thor scowled. “It has been only today that we discovered definitive proof that it was the work of Amora and her sister. I planned to leave today, though I considered your appearance a merry distraction before I departed.” Then, accusing, “I was wrong about that. You take your temper out on me in light of…”

“You’re really not subtle.” Loki was getting pretty sick of the sensitivity about this Pepper situation. He felt almost led to kill her simply to prove he had no loyalties, though that would definitely be labeled as suspicious behavior by the team. Though she destroyed him, Stark would let her walk all over him. How pathetic.

“I had a long flight in and then you lied to the face of the team, even after I proved you wrong. Now you’re telling me you still want to lie? I’m really not seeing any reason to budge, your majesty.”

“Do not mock me.”

“Or should I say Führer?” Loki leaned forward. “With all these lies, it’s hard to say. Are you working for Hydra?” he whispered.

“Stark!” Thor roared. Loki reeled back, surprised. He’d been able to get away with a lot of snapping commentary thus far with Stark’s face, but it looked like Thor couldn’t handle being talked to as less than a king in any context. What a spoiled brat.

“Do not take out your rage on others simply because you cannot handle them alone.” Thor turned for the door. “I will be going after the sorceresses on my own. It was not a matter of permission, solely a courtesy I afforded to give you as my comrade. Though, lately, you don’t seem to want to act as one.”

Loki sat back silently as he watched Thor leave. Once the elevator doors shut behind him, he let out an exhale so heavy he felt his ribs unclench in his chest. Thor had improved quite a lot in his perception of others over the years. He had to make a note of that. Thor also was only barely a part of the team, as it seemed his authority reigned supreme and, as usual, he only did things he felt like doing. There was nobody equipped to tell him no once he went off to carry out whatever task he set his mind to. Loki absently considered in only a half-ponder that things didn’t always change so much, then remembered charging into Jotunheim, then Loki stopped thinking all together and hopped off the counter to find something else to do.

“Jarvis, pull up the feed for the conference room.”

“Right away, sir.”

As the feeds appeared on the screen in front of him, Jarvis took it upon himself to be particularly presumptuous. “You were quite harsh with Mr. Odinson.”

“Yup.”

“Any particular reason?”

“It builds character.”

The conference room had been mostly cleared out of the team. Wilson sat at the table, same spot as before, as Rogers stood and spoke. Two soldiers, relatively contained in their expressions, Rogers moving his arms just the barest way while Wilson watched.

“Turn on audio.”

“Are you sure that you want to monitor—”

“Mute.”

“—strangely?” Wilson was saying.

“It’s probably just jetlag,” Rogers excused. “But he is right. Now that we’re looking at it, it’s clearly magic.”

“You think Thor is lying about it? His brother is kind of a master of magic. I feel like he should know.”

Loki expected to hear something like, “No, of course not. He’s our teammate. He would never lie to us. God bless our American values and patriot hearts.”

Instead, Rogers said, “It’s not outside the realm of possibility. If it’s Asgardian, he’ll have things he’ll need to sort out alone.”

Wilson nodded. “Yeah, but they’re attacking us. They didn’t go to Asgard to screw around, they came here for a reason.”

“You think we should deal with it?” Rogers took a seat, seeming exhausted, barely containing a sprawl.

“I think if Thor wants something to do, we shouldn’t be the cruel dictators who take that away from him. Besides, I think he’s got a bit more jurisdiction than us.” A lightening of tone and a bright smile from Wilson.

Rogers laughed. “You’re right. Still though.” He sighed and rubbed his temple. “I wish he didn’t lie to us.”

“He’s overestimating just how many fights we want to get into.” Wilson stretched his arms above his head.

“I’ve been in enough fights lately. Thor can have this one. I’m pretty sick of magic anyway.”

Already sick of magic? What a shame. Then Rogers wasn’t going to like where all of this went at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I'm hoping to get this story finished with at least one update per week. This chapter is relatively short just to get back into the swing of things, but they'll lengthen back up as I delve further into the main plot.

Amora would ruin everything in her search for Loki. Maybe she knew that his silence meant something particularly sensitive—that it would only take a taunt in the right avenger laced areas to drag him out from his hole. She wasn’t a simpleton and he couldn’t leave her to the sides as though she were. His hands were tied, once again, by the enchantress.

He did not find her in the shadows. Another sign she was angry with him: her lack of accommodation for his preferences. No, she did not take any stealth into consideration and he found her, and Lorelei, in the lighted center of Central Park. The veil over them and the bench they sat upon was haphazard and breakable. As Loki neared he knew the threat in the air before they might think to speak it: _Break our trust and we break your cover._

Honestly, he couldn’t bother feigning surprise.

Lorelei straightened with intrigue, but Amora stayed reclined. Her fingertips danced through the air like she was balancing an invisible coin on her knuckles while her lids sat heavy and uninterested as she drank in the sight of him—him as Loki, not Stark; tall, dark-haired, sunken-eyed. Amora uncrossed her long legs when Loki finally stopped in front of the sisters only to recross them in the opposite manner.

“Hello, sisters.”

“Where have you been?” Lorelei spoke first. She motioned to him with an angry hand, as though she wanted to slap the air. Loki only raised his eyebrows.

“What she means to say is that you’ve been very quiet. But, when we poke at your toys, you came right out to play.” Amora smiled. “Are you making plans without us again?”

“Are you dedicated to losing?” Lorelei added with a smarmy kick of her heel against the concrete sidewalk.

“As flattering as your obsessiveness can be, Enchantress and pet,” Loki began. He held back his smile when Lorelei physically bristled. “I do intend on working individually, yes. Our partnership is contextual and you were not brought in for a reason.”

Amora stood up so smoothly that a better word to describe the motion might have been that she slithered. Her muscles glided her smoothly to his side and she reached a hand around his bicep.

“What are you planning, trickster?”

Loki grabbed her hand. She smiled until his grip tightened and the bones cracked. Amora’s smooth composure snapped and she yanked her hand away before he could snap the joints. Anger lit her up with authenticity and she clenched the wounded hand into a daring fist.

“The nerve you have for a Jotun runt—”

When the seiðr cut through Lorelei’s gut, it did the same for her words. Her voice, the controlling power she had over most men (though, a Jotun runt wasn’t as much man in the typical senses, was it?), broke off and she collapsed to a heap on the ground. Amora did not rush to her side, but her tenseness spoke volumes as she stepped closer to her sister’s body.

“Don’t take off the veil.”

Amora nodded.

Loki stepped closer to her. “Leave me to my mischief, Enchantress, and you will find yourself rewarded for your complacency.” He lifted a hand so his fingers could tuck under her jaw and pull her gaze up towards his eyes. Amora did not shake. She was a noble thing like that.

“And if the Avengers discover your tricks? What then, Laufeyson? Would you have me stand by and let the Thunderer take you once more?”

He smiled and removed his hand. “Ahh, is that worry I hear? Well, worry not, my dear Amora. My silence was not for inactivity. I have planned this to perfection.”

Amora scowled. “You cannot plan for humans. You should know that by now.”

Loki’s first instinct was to push the words away, but he noted the strange inflection in her words. “And might I ask what plagues you so much about the humans?”

“Stark.” Amora hoisted Lorelei off the ground with the flick of her finger so she hovered like deadweight in the air, surrounded by the green of her magic. “He’s found his way through the realms.”

“ _What_?”

Loki had been watching Stark for months before taking the façade. He would have seen Tony if he’d thought to transverse the void. He would have _sensed_ the other presence as soon as he tainted the air with his humanity or his childish tin suit.

“I saw Stark’s suit in the pathways, moving around, taking notes of the environments and talking to the people of the realms. He was alone, but it was him. I know it to be him.” Amora moved her hand through the air like a small-scale ballet as her magic wove ribbons into the space between them. In the threads of her sorcery, Loki saw the unmistakable figure of red and gold. Though, this suit was outfitted in technology Loki had not seen in his months of observation, or even in his days within Stark’s workshop. The technology was close to that on Asgard. Stark hadn’t been so behind as he thought. He was so ahead that he knew to hide his armor from sight on Earth.

“When?” Loki growled. “When was this?”

“Many weeks ago,” Amora relented.

But that wasn’t good enough. Loki stared her down, the anger bellowing into puffs of hatred deep inside his gut, and she stepped back only slightly to regain her confidence before clarifying.

“In this Earth’s designated winter.”

Five months of observation and he had missed Stark’s realm transversal by mere weeks. Even wearing the face of an avenger, he could not account for the greatest of twists in his plans.

Loki did not wait for Amora to speak again. He went straight to the void and left her with her still unconscious sister.


	8. Chapter 8

“Space. The final frontier.”

Silence filled the workshop. Tony shuffled from foot to foot, took a deep breath, and repeated the words with a firm confidence. The tall figure in front of him did not move from under its sheet cover.

“Space. The final. Frontier.”

With a melodramatic, and largely useless sigh, an exasperated AI responded in turn, “These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, sir.”

Tony beamed up at the ceiling. “Its five-year mission? To explore strange, new worlds!” His arms swept out wide as he bounded around the figure. “To seek out new life and new civilizations!” He grabbed the sheet edge with eager tightness, still bouncing on the balls of his bare feet. “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

From Jarvis’s speakers came a painfully sarcastic, mono recording of a 1950’s applause that sounded sampled from one of the very first Stark Expos. It felt right, however, when Tony whipped the sheet away from the Enterprise. A gray-silver suit with red highlights and a sleek shadow. Just as fast as Tony had ripped the sheet away, he clapped his hands and held them out as far as he could. As though to say, ‘I caught a fish _this_ big,’ but the fish being his intergalactic space walking suit instead of, y'know, an actual scaly fish.

“Very nice, sir,” Jarvis congratulated. “Perhaps now would be a good time to rest? I calculate we are entering hour 80 of your time within the workshop. Should I call Colonel Rhodes—”

“Do you have the system ready, Jay?” Tony interrupted as he clicked the assimilation button on his automated wrist gauntlet.

“Of course, sir.” Tony ignored the desert dry irritation in the AI’s tone. “But do you suppose this is the best time? It is almost Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to me, then.”

Enterprise cradled him, warm, a looser fit than what Tony had grown used to in the other suits. He resisted the urge to try and rub the back of his skull where the helmet had made a permanent dent near the base after the Incident. The suit finally clicked into a final stance and Jarvis went from surrounding him in the room to sitting snugly in his ear—practically in his brain. Sometimes Tony wondered who he would be without the AI, but quickly shook the thought off. He wouldn’t go there. He wasn’t sure if he could.

The silence in the void, in the wormhole, accompanied with the sickening twist of a body tumbling back back back into the nothingness of space.

 _Space_ …

Tony had been in _space_.

Enterprise suppressed his shudder. An echo reverberated through his ear from a softly questioning Jarvis. “Sir?”

There was too much out there he didn’t know. Golden helmed gods and magic and armies of aliens who were both creature and machine. When faced with it all, he’d only been prepared to fight the wars meant for countries. Before, that had been enough. To be “privatized world peace” was manageable. At least, he’d always been accountable for the wars of this world. He was no idiot, he’d seen his face plastered on the walls of developing countries filled with families who died because of _his_ weapons— _Stark_ weapons. It wasn’t what he wanted, but he had dealt with it all his life. He’d been born into the legacy. He would just have to survive it.

But then he was in the wormhole, and surviving had been a fluke, and the suit that protected him burned out, his _heart_ burned out, and the helmet dug into the back of his skull, and the Hulk was bellowing, and Cap was there and relieved ( _would Dad finally be proud?_ ), and it was all good except that it wasn’t. The legacy hadn’t called for this. This war of the worlds bullshit had never been Tony’s to sign up for.

When they went up to the penthouse in Stark tower and found Loki meandering back onto his feet after a Hulk level beat down with nothing more than a few scratches here and there on his aristocratic face, Tony suppressed the urge to… To something. Scream? Vomit? Cry? He couldn’t remember. Everything after the battle was so fuzzy now. But he remembered thinking that there’d been six of them and all Loki had were bruises and cuts from their fight. This battle had only ended because he let it end. When Tony ate the shawarma, he had excused himself to the bathroom afterwards to vomit it all back up. Each wretch aggravated the bruises on his torso until he felt like he might pass out, and all Loki had were some unsightly scabs in the crater left by Hulk's attack.

“If it’s all the same to you…” Loki’s voice was a little ragged, like he’d just run a few miles, and it chaffed as he adjusted on the floor. “I’ll have that drink now.”

The lunacy of it all made Tony almost burst out laughing.

This was not his legacy, but this was the world now. Thor was on their side, sure, but Loki had been a commander of something bigger than himself. And something deep inside Tony knew that Thor couldn’t be trusted to just end it. He knew that when Loki, now on the mend after just a 12 hours of captivity on Earth, looked across the fold of Central Park at the entire group of avenging heroes with no fear in his eyes.

“I will take him to Asgard and he will pay for his crimes,” Thor had assured.

But Loki would survive. Loki would always survive. He had the look in his eyes that Obie— _Stane_ —had when he stared down at Tony in what they’d both been so sure would be his last moments. Men like this lived on through their fear. That was their immortality. Loki was an Obediah Stane to Thor that was tied to him closer by brotherhood. A foster-family member who resented the golden child for existing and would do anything to end it. The difference between them was only that Thor was willing to try, had probably never known what it felt like to be rejected by family before. Tony had known. Tony gave up Obediah Stane to survive. Who knew what Loki would give up.

Somewhere in the final frontier was a person who stood to give Loki anything, and that made him dangerous. Tony had felt the unmistakable ache and pull of the galaxies through the wormhole and knew now how to make a suit to counter it. Knew now, with the scepter hidden in his workshop with a gem powerful enough to mold minds, that he could break through again and end this. He knew he could, so he had to. If he didn’t and another Loki appeared and things got bad and another nuke appeared, that would be the end. And that would be on Tony Stark.

He pictured graffiti on walls deep in the crevice of a Star Wars cantina bar; his goatee spanning the fields of stars to perpetuate his hellish reputation even more and—

“Sir? Sir, I would be much more comfortable if you were to answer me. Sir? Would you be so kind as to—”

Tony physically shook his head left to right and kicked a leg out to shimmy around in his spot. “I’m okay.” But his voice shook and he felt a little lightheaded and he wondered, oddly disconnected, if the arc reactor had finally given out.

“Sir, I do not believe you should use the scepter at this time. Perhaps if I call Miss Potts…?”

“She’s busy.” Tony padded over to the table with nothing more heavy to each step than if he had been wearing a pair of particularly thick soled boots. He reached underneath the frame to the locked cabinet to pull out Loki’s scepter. Beautiful, blue, slim, like some sort of intergalactic toothpick. The thought made him giggle as he set the scepter into what he’d been referring to as his engine block. Nobody had bothered to question it. Nobody dared to bother with Tony these days.

The scepter settled into the block and Tony stepped back as it glowed. Selvig had done a lot of good work, but he hadn’t been able to remotely switch it on and off to ensure no follow through. And, even for a guy with a flare for the dramatic, Tony wasn’t about to blast the portal into the middle of the sky. There was no reason, he decided, that he couldn’t just handle it here, on ground level.

When the scepter shot the portal out, it hit the wall and, with a sudden panic, he shot DUM-E out of the way of the particle blast. The robot fell over, but he was looked unharmed, so Tony turned his attention back to the portal.

A perfect circle. He’d never seen a perfect circle. Sure, he thought he had, everybody thought they had, but now he really _knew_. Knew this to be perfect and untainted by even pixel bit uneven edgings. That ache in his chest started up again and his lungs tightened and it was suddenly so hard to breathe.

Enterprise held him upright even after Tony fainted.

* * *

 

“Jarvis, open him up **now**.”

The workshop lights barred down through the once dark display helm. Tony winced until he could blink his way back into awareness to see familiar brown eyes staring up at him. The portal had closed (Jarvis must have shut it off after he conked out) and the staff was nowhere in sight. Fingers snapped in front of his face and Tony jerked his gaze back to Rhodey.

“What is this thing?” Rhodey motioned to the suit with only a passing interest. “Get out of there.”

“S’new,” Tony mumbled, still light-headed. “I’m good though, Rhodey, I promise.”

Rhodey stepped aside just a bit as Jarvis, against Tony’s orders, opened Enterprise up. With the extra space assimilated into the inside of the suit, the lack of support was especially jarring and Tony almost slammed face first into the ground. Instead, he toppled on top of Rhodey and then the two of them collapsed onto the ground together.

“Whoah whoah!” Rhodey managed as best as he could to keep heads from hitting hard floor and bones from breaking. He lightly pushed Tony back, hand situated on his shoulder, and stared hard into his face. He must have found something that he didn’t like, because his pushy hand was reaching for the arc reactor now.

“No no no.” Tony pulled away with a groan. “I’m fine.”

“Last time you looked this rough, that thing was killing you. Just humor me, man.”

Tony scowled and, a little woozily, he pulled up his shirt to display his fully functioning reactor. Rhodey examined it for a few moments, head bobbing in and out as if to check for any optical illusions covering up techboard veins, but finally pulled away when he found nothing.

“You think you can eyeball my body and not even offer to buy me a drink? Cruel.”

Rhodey scoffed at Tony’s prod. “You’re a cheap date. I’ll chip in when it takes breaking something bigger than a ten to get you in bed.”

“Oooh, Rhodeyyy~.”

“Seriously, man.” Rhodey stood, slow, and pulled Tony up with him. His head felt a little better, but he still wobbled a bit on the lift. “I’m starting to think I need to go to medical school to hang out with your ass anymore. Ever since you first suited up, this near-the-brink-of-death look is getting a little too regular. Even for you.”

“You implying you don’t feel like shit every once and a while from superhero-ing around?” Rhodey lightly pushed Tony into his work chair. It spun a little and Tony grinned. “I’m the only one who can’t handle it, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.” Rhodey leaned against the table and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You implied it.”

“Oh, well, yeah.” Rhodey shrugged. “Of course I implied it.”

“You must be forgetting who the genius in the room is.” Tony pointed a finger up at him and blinked at it when it doubled before his eyes. He lowered it quickly.

Rhodey lifted his voice. “Jay.”

“Yes, Colonel?”

“When’s the last time the genius ate?”

“Excludi—”

“Excluding coffee, yeah.”

“Coffee is a bean, y’know, so that counts as a food.”

“He ate a peanut butter and coconut smoothie at noon.”

“See!” Tony threw his arms out dramatically.

“… Yesterday,” Jarvis finished.

Rhodey only raised his eyebrows and gave Tony that famous, inscrutable, Rhodey look that he saved for his military underlings. Tony winced and crossed his arms over his chest. “Traitor,” he mumbled sidelong to the belligerent AI.

“Tony,” Rhodey sighed. “What the hell?”

Tony moved to stand up again. “Don’t give me that. I’m fine.”

“You’ve been holed up here since New York.”

“Yeah.”

“After falling out of a worm hole.”

“Uhuh.”

“Fighting aliens.”

“Sure.”

“And you want to ‘I’m fine’ this? Is that what we’re gonna do?”

Rhodey grabbed two smoothies out of the minifridge and tossed one to Tony. He caught it, just barely, and uncapped the top for a bit of nutrition. “I don’t see the problem with it,” Tony lamented before suckling a bit on the straw. _Ahhh, strawberry_.

As he drank he became increasingly aware of Rhodey’s wandering eyes; how they lingered over the engine block and the newly locked cabinet system that held (hopefully) the scepter. Rhodey then turned his attention back to Tony and waited for the food to settle.

“I forgot to eat. It’s fine.” Tony shrugged. “I’m good now. I don’t see the issue.”

“What is that?” Rhodey asked again about Enterprise. Then he motioned to the engine block.

“Just a new suit. Had some updates in mind after the New York thingy.”

Silence again. Rhodey turned his own smoothie over in his hand as he summed Tony up. Tony shoved his head in his hands and groaned. “Whaaaaat?”

“What’s in the cabinet, Tone?”

Tony froze. He shrugged, hoping he didn’t stop too long, and settled his cheek against the fat of his palm. “Tools.”

“Don’t do this. I can’t stop you, I get that, but you gotta tell me what’s happening so you’re not in that wormhole alone. Okay? So, tell me…” Rhodey adjusted, pushed off the side of the table, and set the smoothie down, untouched. “What is in that cabinet?”

Tony told Rhodey everything. It felt weird, to be open about it, about the fear and the void and the pressing impulsivity that came from being so immersed in the fabric of galaxies they knew nothing about. Rhodey didn’t say much. He went into MIT mode. Like Tony was some great lecturer he’d never get to hear again. When Tony got to the end, to the black and then the reawakening from the Hulk alarm clock feeling like he’d left a part of himself back in the portal and filled with fear, his voice shook and his lungs got tight all over again.

He told Rhodey, “I have to do something.”

Rhodey’s hand moved down from touching his chin, thoughtful, to his side. He crossed the small amount of space between them and put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I know.” He shook him just a bit, enough to jostle him back into their world. “But stop doing something alone, alright?”

Tony choked something disgustingly sentimental into the back of his throat and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I can do that.”


End file.
